• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 19, 2006

Cinema advertising continued its explosive growth in 2005--with revenue surging 20.6 percent to almost $528 million from about $438 million in 2004, according to a report released today by the Cinema Advertising Council (CAC). The 2005 results, tabulated by Miller, Kaplan, Arase and Co., follow several years of sustained double-digit growth--and the industry hopes for similar growth in 2006, according to Bob Martin, president of the CAC.

Big brands using cinema advertising in 2005 included American Express, the Army National Guard, Hyundai, Nike, Toyota, Unilever, Verizon, Wal-Mart, and X-Box. According to Cliff Marks, president of National CineMedia (NCM), a CAC member: "Retail has also been a big one, with companies like Radio Shack and Wal-Mart really getting serious now. We're also seeing wireless companies like Verizon and Cingular using us more and more."

Asked what's driving cinema ad revenue's remarkable growth, Martin pointed first to a "media environment that's more and more fragmented," in which moviegoing audiences represent a relatively stable, identifiable, and observable target group. He also cited the widespread adoption of digital satellite technology that allows implementation, and alterations, of cinema advertising campaigns with very short turnaround times.

Marks agreed with Martin about both factors, first noting the growing complexity of the overall media landscape: "In a world that continues to fragment, and where it's harder to know who you're reaching and when, we can deliver that 18-34 audience, and we can serve them with sight, sound, and motion."

Marks also boasted of NCM's satellite delivery system, recalling: "We've invested about $150 million to digitize." According to Marks, that translates into an ability to "narrowcast" ad content for different audiences: "That allows us to target specific films or ratings genres, in specific markets, for specific brands, using a digital satellite feed." Marks noted that "NCM has 11,000 digital screens, and over 90 percent digital coverage of our audiences." It's also a boon to advertisers running "just-in-time" creative programs: "It allows us to change creative on a weekly basis, which is great for people who have tight production deadlines."

Both Martin and Marks also drew attention to the particularly desirable demos among self-selecting movie audiences, with Martin asserting that "moviegoers tend to be better educated than the general population, and they also tend to be relatively younger. For example, 17-year-old males come to movies in big numbers, and that's a particularly hard demographic to capture nowadays." By the same token, Marks added: "If you want to reach three- to-six-year-olds, you can do a buy zeroing in on G and PG movies."